Does Consumerism Have Green Fatigue?

A new survey has supported research that “green fatigue” in the consumer world. Grail Research’s, “The Green Revolution,” has concluded that 43% of “light” green consumers—customers who have purchased environmentally-friendly products in the past—have either reduced their usage of green products or have switched back to conventional products over the past two years. At the same time, the percentage of traditional consumers increased to 22%.

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Annica Blake, the Global Head of Research Services at Grail Research said that there is still a market for green products in today’s market because of a specific market which has slightly increased over the past two years. “The number of ‘dark green’ consumers – those who select earth-friendly products for most of their purchases – increased by one percent, and now make up nine percent of the consumer market,” said Blake.

Here are some other findings from the study:

The study has found that consumers who have not yet switched to green technology. Five percent of dark green consumers and 22 percent of light green consumers switched from green to conventional products.Nine percent of consumers say they never consider buying green products – an increase of four percentage points since the previous report, two years ago. Also, being green is no longer a growing market.

American green consumers are decreasing because of the continuous recession. Light green customers have decreased 16 percent over the past two years. Also, 43 percent of green consumers cited the struggling economy as their main reason for why they have not bought green.

With the green market slightly decreasing, it looks like companies will have to do a few things to increase consumerism in their respective markets. An idea would be to up their advertising to persuade and influence a green market. They also would need to bring new ideas to the table to increase buyer interest and make buying environmentally-friendly products, not a thing of the past, but a wave for the future.

The whole idea behind green technology is to stop the pollution generated by coal and oil, which corporations can charge lower electric rate precisely because they dump their waste into the environment, while green technology is more expensive because it does not generate as much electricity per unit. There is a challengs for scientific technology: invent a green power source that produces more electricity per unit than coal or oil!